When the Sidhe Hit the Fan
by breelikethechiese
Summary: Jack and Harry go back to the Dresden-verse and from there go into the Nevernever to close the rifts that are throwing all sorts of mutated fae around the universe. Rated for future chapters  it's Capt. Jack, people .  please note, Dresden NOVELS, not TV
1. Meet Bob the Skull

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Characters, settings, and some plot structures are borrowed from the BBC and the mind of Mr. Jim Butcher with a very pretty smile and a promise to return them in the same condition in which they left.

* * *

><p>"Ianto," cried Jack. "You're with me!" The two men ran out the Hub and dove into their iconic SUV. They sped off into late night traffic in downtown Cardiff. Ianto was checking his handheld to make sure they were headed in the right direction.<p>

"Take a left here", he mumbled. Jack obeyed and lifted two wheels of the road while making the turn. Something had just come through the rift that gave off the strongest energy signature in the recorded history of Torchwood. After breaking several speed limits, most traffic laws and the leash of a now elated pouch, the operatives came to a screeching halt in a dark, narrow, dead end alleyway.

"If we get out of this situation," said Jack under his breath, "the clichés will kill us."

Before them stood a man dressed in what used to be a nice jacket, though now it more closely resembled something more akin to scarecrow wear. In one hand, he brandished a rusted knife that looked like it would crumble in his shaky hand before cause any real damage, and in the other he clutched a stuffed to bursting black duffel bag. Ianto and Jack slowly got out of the SUV and started moving toward the nervous vagrant.

"We're not trying to hurt you." Just as the soothing words left Jack's lips, Ianto's handheld tumbled to the ground. In a moment of sheer panic, the vagrant took off, dropping both the knife and the duffel. "Well done!" chortled Jack. Ianto cast him a look that was somewhere between "I hate you right now" and

"I'm sorry, it's all my fault", before collecting the fallen equipment and taking some readings.

"It appears that the duffel is what fell through," commented Ianto quietly. Jack approached it slowly, his own scanner humming and whirring intently.

"I can't tell in something inside is alive or not. I've never seen anything like this before." He nudged it with his foot expecting it to leap into the air. When nothing happened, he picked it up and gave it a small shake… Still nothing happened. "I suppose we take it back to the Hub." He and Ianto retreated to the SUV with the strange bag.

An uneventful trip lead the captain and his lieutenant back to Torchwood headquarters where Jack set the duffel on a wheeled cart to open it. He did this in the medical examination area, just in case. It was easier to contain whatever was inside with all the tech within arm's reach. The zipper pulled back with what could only be described as a sign of relief. The contents were many and varied; a pair of swords (a katana disguised a cane and an old school two handed broadsword), a bleached and worn human skull, and a pouch of odd smelling grey dust among other things. Nothing in the bag trigger any alarms, nor did anything jump up and attempt to eat anyone's face. Jack sat there and puzzled about it for a long while. _How is this possible?_ thought Jack. _The thing damn near glowed with energy when we picked it up, hell I could feel it! But now, there's nothing. _

Owen and Gwen chose that moment to make an entrance into the Hub, all laughs and friendly shoves, as per the usual. Jack called out a greeting, surprised that it was late enough in the morning to have the team start showing up already. Owen made his way to the exam area to see what Jack had done to his office (for lack of a better term). Ianto was just coming in with his customary tray of liquid gold (known as coffee).

"So, what's the verdict?" he asked, setting down his tray for all to access.

"Your guess is as good as mine." Jack was still puzzled over the contents of the bag, now spread out on the exam table. "There has got to be something I'm missing!" He jumped up, coffee mug in hand, and started to pace around the table.

"What's all this then?" ask Gwen, clearly confused as to what she was actually looking at.

"Earlier, Jack and I caught something coming through the rift and we found this. When we got there, the readings we were getting from it were off the charts. Jack looked as if he expected something to jump out at him when he approached it. I thought it was a malfunction of the equipment."

"How could the equipment be malfunctioning? I checked and updated everything before I left last night." Tosh had taken that moment to poke her head in exam area to see what was going on.

"I… um… well…" Ianto stammered for a little while.

"A vagrant knocked it from his hands during an impromptu escape," the Captain supplied. Ianto thanked him with a bright red face (this was something that Jack would never let him live down).

"That would do it," nodded Tosh. "Let me see your scanner, maybe it was off."

Jack stopped pacing. "No…" he began, but never finished. He was staring at the skull that sat on the exam table like it had just grown tentacles and started waving.

"Jack?" Gwen's voice was cautious. "What is it Jack?" That seemed to pull him out of his state.

"Nothing…" But he didn't take his eyes from the skull. Lost in thought, he pulled the bioscanner to the table and set the skull on it. The scanner whirred quietly, but the results were less that heartening. Jack fumed silently and left the area, and the rest of the team followed suit, remembering other things that needed to get done.

* * *

><p>First, I'm unceremoniously shoved into a duffel bag with two Swords of the Cross, some Ghost Dust and a bunch of other illegal object that Harry did not want the cops finding. Then I'm buried, alive I might add, in the Nevernever. Finally, I fall through the ground (don't ask me how), and land in what I can only assume is a foreign country on earth. There was running and yelling and squealing tires. It was GREAT! The only thing it was miss was a hot babe at the end of the chase. When the running stopped though, things got weird. I felt… something. I don't know what, but something knew I was there. So, like the live-to-run-away-another-day coward I am, I hid in my skull. Nothing could hurt me unless I invited it in here, so I was safe… at least I thought I was.<p>

Someone new picked me up and put me in a car (I'm still in the duffel bag at this point, but it's just easier to assume that the bag is part of me). The whole drive there were two guys talking. One was clearly an American, but the other must have been some sort of Brit or something. Definitely not Aussie, but I don't think that really matters. What does matter is the fact that they were flirting! Gah! It couldn't have been to chicks, could it? Apparently, spontaneous transport is working against my wish to see girl on girl action.

The vehicle stopped and I was taken into a basement of some sort. A lot was going on around me, but I couldn't figure any of it out. I could sense some computers, and other more modern technology (better find a way to tell Harry not to come down here), but there was another layer of something that I had never felt before. For someone like me, who almost knows everything, it was downright terrifying. I was still bound to Harry, so any chance of leaving my little bony cage (though a comfortable cage) was out of the question. Someone had taken me out of the bag and set me on a solid surface. There was some general chatter about what was all in the bag. When the chatter died down a little, I ventured a peak into my surroundings.

Everything was old white tiling. The kind you see on the sets of British TV shows. There were also a lot of lights and polished stainless steel. It could be a lab of some sort, possibly a medical station… but underground? The Swords were laying on the table in front of me, along with all the other contents of the bag. There were people on all sides of me. I could see a man in an old style army coat pacing, another guy in a nice suit (nice enough for me to consider swinging in his direction), and then I could see the left side of a woman with curves in all the right places. I was considering a stealthy hop to see the rest of this woman when Army Coat locked eyes with me. I pulled back a split second after, but he saw me. I heard him try to brush off his sudden pause. I was moved again, and I felt that unknown touch of Something again, this time coming from under me. I had to find a way to get in touch with Harry. This place was bad juju.

* * *

><p>The rest of the day went smoothly within the confines of the Torchwood Hub. Jack did regular checks on the objects from the duffel, but other than that, it was situation normal. Computers hummed, scanners chirped, and papers were shuffled. No one else really paid any attention to what was in the exam area. No mysterious lights appeared, and nothing tried to eat anyone's face.<p>

Gwen left a little early, claiming that she had a date with Rhys. Owen and Tosh left not too long after Gwen, leaving Jack and Ianto alone. In an effort to distract the increasingly stressed captain, Ianto lured him to his office and proceeded to thoroughly distract him.

It was a while before either of the two men were seen in the main gathering place of the Hub, but when they did make their grand appearance, they were greeted by an odd orange glow coming from the exam area. Jack cursed under his breath and raced down the stairs, attempting to button his pants. Ianto poked his head around the door frame, also fumbling with his bottoms, to see what was going on. Ever the proper one, Ianto grabbed a shirt (which turned out to be Jack's, and was much too big), and followed his Captain. The scene that greeted him was an odd one, Jack was standing frozen on the stair and the skull from the bag glowing orange and its mouth hanging open at an odd angle. There was a pregnant pause, and then the skull seemed to say "Oh shit".

Many things happened all at once. Jack and Ianto pulled out their guns and trained them on the table, and the light in the skull flared and then disappeared making the jaw of the skull clatter shut. Stillness followed, the panting of the adrenaline filled men the only sound.

"What the hell was that?" demanded Jack. Ianto shrugged half heartedly and continued staring at the skull. Jack poked the offending cluster of bone with the muzzle of his gun. This was met with a flare of orange light and a rather annoyed noise that sounded astonishingly like a grunt.

"Do you mind?" Both men standing in the exam theatre jumped at the statement. "I don't go around knocking on your head!"

"Th-that's not p-possible!" stuttered Ianto. "It's just a skull!"

"I scanned it earlier," agreed Jack. "The results were clear. There isn't anything in that thing!"

"Well, apparently your little scanner is WRONG!" replied the skull.

"What are you?" asked the Captain.

"I am a spirit of intellect. And you seem to both be human, which tells me that I'm not in the Nevernever anymore." The skull paused and chuckled to itself.

"Maybe I should find some ruby slippers and a little dog named Toto." Another pause. No one said a word. "What, you've never seen the _Wizard of Oz_? I guess it was a stretch…"

"What do you mean a 'spirit of intellect'?"

"Just that, I'm a real brainiac. I've spent the last few centuries hanging around some of the most powerful wizards the world has seen. In fact, one of them is supposed to come find me soon."

"Wizards? Are you serious? There's no such thing as magic."

"Is that so, Mr. Coat?"

"That's Captain Harkness to you, bone boy."

"Alright, Harkness. You can call me Bob."

"And who is this 'wizard' that's coming to find you?"

"Oh, just a guy who's going up against an entire nation of vampires to save a little girl with nothing but a couple of sticks and dog. His name is Harry Dresden, and while he doesn't get near as much action as you two clear do…" Ianto blushed and glanced curiously at the skull trying to figure out how it was able to leer at him that way. "He is quite capable of creating a pile of smoldering rubble where this place is." The men looked at each other skeptically. "Don't believe me, look up recent events in Chicago."

Eager to get away from the weird talking skull, Ianto scurried off to one of the computer terminals and with a few key strokes pulled up information on all major occurrences, both benign and otherwise, in the US city. "There's nothing here to suggest anything out of the norm." In the exam theatre, there was a clatter of bone on steel as Bob's jaw dropped… Or rather popped up, cause the whole skull to tumble over.

"What do you mean nothing? A building was just blown up yesterday!"

"Nothing's been blown up in Chicago for years. I've gone back a decade and the only explosions have been relatively normal… for explosions that is."

Bob mulled over the possibilities for a moment and decided to give the annoying little know it all the address to Harry's office building. A few key clicks later…

"There's nothing at that address. Never has been." Bob was speechless, a fact that was completely lost on his new associates. He tried the apartments address. "Looks like that is actually a vacant factory building."

"That's impossible! It's a residential area; there should be an old boarding house th-…" Bob stopped mid word, as a thought struck him. Since working with Kemmler, he had been contemplating the existence of other dimensions. He didn't give it much credit; it made him think of cheap sci-fi sex novels (a pause in thoughts… three titties- awesome!). But, still… Everything was the same, save for Dresden's existence. Bob gave specific events and locations for Ianto to check, and everything came back blank, save for major world events.

It took a while for Jack to regain his usual swagger and confidence. He had complete faith in his technology; it could not be wrong, simple as that. But there it was, a skull having his deputy checking world events with the absolute certainty that something happened, when nothing had. Jack stopped to chuckle quietly, remembering stories from Rose; her unwavering conviction that her father was dead when he was walking around in the dimension she was in at the present. Sensing no immediate danger, the Captain wandered off to his office, lost in a pensive cloud of memories of Rose. The not quite satisfied desires from earlier stirred at the thought of her laugh. He lost himself in thought and memory for a long five minutes before recalling what had brought the companion to mind.

There was another clatter of bone on steel table as the skull Jack seemed to have just righted fell over again with the exclamation of "Parallel dimensions?"


	2. Harry Who

I took forty minutes shaving and putting on my nicest clothes, which amounted to jeans and a T-shirt and my old fleece-lined denim jacket. I didn't have any cologne, so the deodorant and soap would have to do. I didn't allow myself to think about what was going on. In a dream, if you ever start realizing it's a dream, poof, it's gone.

And I didn't want that to happen.

After that I spent a few minutes just... breathing. Listening to the water around me. the ticking of the clock. The peaceful silence. Drinking in the comforting sense of the solitude all around me.

Then I said out loud, "Screw this Zen crap. Maybe she'll be early." And I got up to leave.

I came out of the cabin and into the early afternoon sun, quivering with pleasant tension and tired and haunted- and hopeful. I shielded my eyes against the sun and studied the City's skyline.

My foot slipped a little, and I nearly lost my balance, just as something smacked into the wall of the cabin behind me, a sharp popping sound, like a rock thrown against a wooden fence. I turned, and it felt slow for some reason. I looked at the _Water Beetle_'s Cabin wall bulkhead, whatever, behind me and thought _'Who splattered red paint on my boat?'_

And then my left leg started to fold all by itself.

I looked down at a hole in my shirt, just to the left of my sternum.

I thought, _Why did I pick the shirt with a bullet hole in it?_

Then I fell off the back of the boat, and into the icy water of Lake Michigan. It hurt, but only for a second. After that, my whole body felt deliciously warm, monstrously tired, and the sleep that had evaded me seemed, finally, to be within reach.

It got dark.

It got quiet.

And I realized that I was all by myself.

"Die alone," whispered a bitter, hateful old man's voice.

"Hush, now," whispered a woman's voice. It sounded familiar.

I never moved, but I saw a light ahead of me. With the light, I saw that I was moving down a tunnel, directly toward it. Or maybe it was moving toward me. The light looked like something warm and wonderful and I began to move toward it.

Right up until I heard a sound.

_Typical_, I thought. _Even when you're dead, it doesn't get any easier_.

The light rushed closer, and I distinctly heard the horn and the engine of an oncoming train.

~Last page and a half of Jim Butcher's _Changes_. Book 12 of The Dresden Files.

* * *

><p>Then suddenly there were people there too. Everywhere. Harry fell and fell and landed on something hard and loud. Then the screaming started. Harry looked down at himself, and spotted the blood coming from the bullet hole in his chest. People were all yelling, and pointing. A young woman with a dark complexion and a Londoner's accent came rushing up.<p>

"My name is Dr. Martha Jones, you've been shot. Try not to move. Can you speak?" Harry tried to, but was only successful in making himself cough up blood. "Okay, no then. Just relax, we have an ambulance on its way to you." The thought of going to the hospital made Harry's heart drop into his stomach. He struggled to tell Dr. Jones that he shouldn't be taken to a crowded hospital because of his... Something stopped him, _This woman isn't going to know about the supernatural truths in the world, _he thought. The edges of Harry's vision started to go black, he embraced the sensation.

Getting the wounded man to the hospital was a slow process. Dr. Jones had never see in so many ambulances break down in one day, she made a mental note to talk to the mechanic down at the garage. Couple that with London traffic in general, and the route from King's Cross to the nearest hospital almost cost this man his life. _The investigation is going to be hell on the Bobbies_, thought Martha.

Martha took decided to see to the patient herself, seeing as it was her hospital that admitted the man. She rushed him through the ER and to the OR, hoping not to have to see the ME. _This place has too many abbreviations_, she thought to herself with a small chuckle. Surgery lasted hours, thanks to equipment failures. It was a miracle that this man survived, but he did.

After getting him settled into a recovery room, Martha took a moment to take a look at him as a whole, and not a hole. He was tall, really tall. At least 2 meters, with the look of a fresh shave and shower about him. _He was soaking wet when I found him_, thought Martha. But that didn't feel right, he smelled of... damp, fish and fuel, like a lake. But they were in London, the closest body of water was the Thames, and there was no way this man was in there. His features were drawn, even in sleep. Martha had a sense that this man had suffered a tremendous loss. It wasn't an uncommon sensation in this place, but this seemed different.

Martha sighed. She checked a few things off his chart and turned to leave.

She was not more than 5 steps outside his room when sensors and monitors inside screamed and screeched, before crackling and releasing the blue smoke of scorched electronics. The doctor spun on her heel and dashed into the room followed by several nurses to find the patient batting little fires that had started where the diodes on his chest had been. The nurses surrounded him, putting the wires to get the smoldering plastic off his chest. Martha walked over to the monitor bank and pulled the plug to get the racket to quiet down. Someone had produced a tube of burn ointment, and began applying it to the panicked man. Martha waved away all but the nurse taking the man's vitals the old fashioned way, and took the ointment and began treating the little burns herself.

The patient flinched with every touch of the ointment, but relief soon spread over his face. He sagged against his pillows, eyes closed, but clearly still awake.

"Alright, then. What's your name?" Martha set the burn gel aside and picked up his chart.

"Harry Dresden," came the croaked response. The attending nurse lifted a foam cup with water in it to his lips and he sipped gratefully.

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dresden," Martha said, while scribbling in the name over the "John Doe" name card on his chart. "You are one of the most unlike men I have met, sir. Nearly every piece of equipment had to be changed out during your operation." Harry grunted, his eyes still closed tight.

"I have that effect on technology."

"I see," commented Dr. Jones before she dismissed the nurse. She pulled a chair up to the bed side and settled in to collect some information for the police. They'd be in as soon as they found out that he had lived, but there was no harm in asking him first. "I'd like to let you know, we recovered a rather large caliber bullet from your chest. Another millimeter and it would have punctured your heart. Do you have any idea of who would like to shoot you?"

"A lot of people," chuckled Harry.

"Mr. Dresden, I'm afraid this is not a joke. You were found in the middle of a busy platform in King's Cross Station soaking wet, and bleeding from a fresh gunshot wound. I fail to see—"

"King's Cross?" interrupted Harry. "As in London, England King's Cross Station?" Worried thought bunched his brow, but his eyes did not open, almost as if they couldn't.

"Yes, you're in London right now, Harry." The two were silent for a while; Harry deep in thought, and Martha taking notes at his obvious confusion. She was just about to reach for the phone to call for a CT scan, just in case they missed something in the first one when Harry touched her hand. She jerked her hand back in reflex.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to scare you, but I wanted to make sure you were real." The doctor gave him a blank look. "I was shot not too long ago; I thought this could be some form of afterlife."

"Okay, that sounds like a good place to start, Mr. Dresden. What do you remember about being shot?" Harry was quiet for a moment.

"I remember stepping on the deck of my brother's boat, being slammed in the chest by something, and falling into Lake Michigan." Dr. Jones stopped, her face a careful mask of blank empathy.

"Lake Michigan?" she asked.

"Yep, the _Water Beetle_, that would be the boat, hasn't really left Lake Michigan since it was put there."

"Have you been shot before, Harry?" Now she was really worried, there could potentially be some serious brain damage if this man was being sincere in what he was saying about being shot on Lake Michigan. The wound was too fresh to have happened there, and there wasn't any evidence that the wound had been treated and had reopened on the trip to the UK.

"Yes, I have been shot before, but it wasn't on my brother's boat, nor was it in the chest." Harry knew the lady doctor thought he was crazy. _This isn't going to be easy_, he thought.

"Alright, what's your brother's name and where does he live? Maybe we can get a hold of him to help us sort things out. Do you know if he was on the boat with you?"

"His name is Thomas Raith, he lives in Chicago, and…" Harry paused for a moment. "I-I can't remember if he was on the boat or not." The discomfort in admitting that fact was evident on his face. Martha saw it and was touched.

"How's your pain, Mr. Dresden?" she asked. "Do you want me to give you something to help you sleep?" Harry nodded, his expression distance. Martha went down to the nurse's station and got a dose of a pain killer strong enough to knock the big man out for a few hours and helped him take it. She made sure he was comfortable before heading to her office.

After a few calls, she had a clerical person tracking down this Thomas Raith. The rest of her shift passed relatively uneventfully. She checked in on Dresden several times to find him sleeping every time. All of the equipment in his room had been replaced with the oldest models they could find. Apparently, the hospital wasn't willing to risk the new, high tech, expensive stuff around a guy that seemed to be a jinx to all things electronic.

By the end of her shift, Martha still hadn't heard from clerical about Dresden's brother, so she swung by the desk to ask. She found a very flustered elderly woman who looked relieved to see her.

"You can take this one right back, Dr. Jones," the secretary said promptly.

"Was he rude to you, Mrs. Nobel?"

"No, he doesn't exist."

"What do you mean? The patient was very clear about the name."

"Well, apparently your patient is either hallucinating or just plain wrong. I called every agency and consulate I could possibly think of and there is no one by the name of Mr. Thomas Raith in all of Chicago. I am inclined to think this a joke, but I expect better of you, Dr. Jones." Mrs. Nobel slapped a manila fill on the desk then turned around in a clearly dismissive huff.

"Thank you for checking, Mrs. Nobel." Martha picked up the file and left for the evening. It was late, and Dresden had been sleeping every time she had check on him, so she left for home. The overnight staff knew to page her at home if anything serious came up.

Martha returned home, made a simple meal and settled in for a nice relaxing night… that never started. There was something in the back of her mind all night. A nagging thought that refused to make itself completely known. She kept thinking of that man in the post operative ward with a bullet hole in his chest. With a heavy sigh, she heaved herself off her deep comfy couch and to her computer.

Thanks to her involvement in UNIT in the past, Dr. Jones still had access to Interpol and other international information centers. Granted, her clearance wasn't very high any more, but it was just high enough to take a look into this Harry Dresden character in her hospital. After entering his name and other identifying features into at least three databases, she wound up right where she started. Apparently, Harry Dresden did not exist outside of the mind of this poor deranged man in post-op.

Frustrated, Martha was just about to give up when she had a thought. There had been cases of physical trauma changing the accent and speech patterns a person uses, and being on the receiving end of a bullet to the chest is most definitely traumatic. Dr. Jones pulled up a domestic database and typed in the name one more time, promising herself some rest if it yielded nothing. Somewhere in the city, dozens of servers hummed and purred with the request. After several minutes of just that, Martha was about to give up.

Then one fill popped up from a month ago. Martha clicked on the document, only be met by a whole lot of redacted information, line upon line of blacked out writing. Halfway down the useless doc, one line stood out, plain as day. "… items claiming to belong to a Mr. Harry Dresden. Any information on his whereabouts should be reported immediately." That was it, one line. No letter head, no identifying markings, nothing. The doctor scrolled down to the bottom of the document, just in case, and stared at her screen for a while. She was tired. A few moments with her eyes closed and she started to nod off. Her body relaxed, and her hands fell from where she had them crossed over her chest. Her hand smacked the mouse, waking the computer screen. In the moments that it took for her eyes to refocus and adjust to the brightness of the flat around her, she saw an iconic symbol on the screen that was nearly hidden behind the redactions and struck out script. A watermark on the paper, in the design of a stylized letter T, composed of interlocking rings.

Martha slapped her forehead and said a little loud for the situation, "Torchwood!"

There was a mad scramble for a phone with Captain Jack Harkness' number saved to it. The thought of being in the same room with him again sent her pulse racing for a moment, before she remembered the cute little clerk who was working with the Captain over in Cardiff; Ianto. They were quite close when she saw them last. Martha smiled to herself, feeling the raise in alertness that always accompanied adventures with Torchwood. A thought struck her, _Could the Doctor be involved?_


	3. Like the Hulk, but Less Green

A week past. Most of the time Harry was under mild sedation in order to keep the equipment monitoring his condition, making sure his heart kept beating, would work for longer than it would if he were awake. Martha was with him every time he woke up. She asked him questions about his life, his age, his home. He could answer simple things directly related to his body, his family, and some of his friends; but anything beyond that was just missing. Both doctor and patient were deeply disturbed by this finding. Harry would never let it show, but he was terrified. In a place he hardly knew, no one coming to get him, no one he knew to tell him that everything was going to be okay. Only this strange lady doctor who looked at him like he was crazy half the time, and with unfathomable pity the other half.

The Lady Doctor pulled every string she had to keep Dresden in the hospital. It was a miracle his body was still functioning going by the scars she could see, and the scars she couldn't see. In her free time, which occurred mainly in the wee hours of the morning, Martha sat with him and listened to the mumbled horrors that came to him in his sleep. Guilt pained the good Doctor during these visits. Being the hospital was never fun for anyone, and this man has been there for a week under sedation. Not that he had been laying in the same bed for that long. Night time was the only time he would allow himself to be moved, claiming he didn't want to disturb the other patients with his clumsy movements, so on nights when Dr. Jones was off duty she would take him for walks around the grounds. There wasn't much room for wandering, but the few little courtyards allowed for at least a few lung-fulls of semi-fresh air.

The call to report Dresden's appearance to Torchwood became _calls_ to Torchwood. No one was answering. Eventually, Toshiko found a phone line that had been gnawed upon by a rat and repaired it. When it was fixed, everyone's cell phones started to ring at once with calls that never made it through.

"I modified all the mobiles that we get in with alien tech," explained Tosh under the strained looks from her teammates. "We all function off of the national grid. We have all our own records and what not, and if the authorities need a copy of them, I've given myself a backdoor into a popular carrier. Everything is legitimate; just a little more private is all." Jack shot her a look somewhere between admiration and anger.

"I've been getting calls and voice mails from Martha Jones in London about Dresden." Tosh dropped the mobile in her hand. Everyone knew about the skull that sat on the table right in the middle of the in the window of Jack's office that claimed to be waiting a mysterious "wizard" named Harry Dresden. It had been Jack's pet project for about a month.

"London?" asked Ianto. "We haven't seen any rift activity in London in years."

"He could have travelled," replied Jack, who was swinging his long coat over his shoulders and heading to the door. "Regardless, I'm going. Martha wouldn't call unless she was certain."

"I thought she left UNIT," interjected Owen. His curiosity was peeked; the doctor lady's face was still with him since her last visit. "How would she have known to contact us about Dresden if she didn't see the memo?"

"This is Martha Jones we're talking about!" yelled Jack from the door. "Not your typical physician, Owen. If something made her call, I need to be there yesterday." And with that, he was gone. He phoned the authorities on the way, letting them know that Torchwood had an emergency and that speed and time was of the essence. The patrols left him alone all the way to London and Martha's hospital.

* * *

><p>Dr. Jones had just gotten Dresden settled back into bed after one such walk, when her pager screamed to life in her coat pocket; and just as most electronics did around the man, it squacked and let out a tiny curl of blue smoke. "The blokes in IT are going to have my arse for this," she mumbled as she walked out of the room. The nurse's station on that floor told her there was a man in reception who refused to speak to anyone but her. Apparently, one of the nurses had followed the mystery man into the building. There was a particular spring in her step that can only come from flirtations from a specific man. Martha dashed to the elevator and spent the entire trip down tapping her foot.<p>

The doors opened on a nearly empty reception area save for one slumped over form in an ageless wool coat. Something inside the doctor snapped and she stormed over to the snoring form and slapped the one cheek that was exposed beneath the folds of the coat. The man attached to the cheek jerked upwards and came to his feet in a reflexive fighting stance. "Captain Harkness, I hardly think that is the way to greet a friend." Jack blinked his eyes several times before the light behind them winked on.

"Martha!" Instantly, his arms were around her, crushing her in an attempt to say hello. The lady doctor tapped him on the shoulder.

"I need air, Jack." With an apologetic look, the captain released her from his grasp only to be meant with an expression that could have burned through the TARDIS. "Where have you been? I contacted Torchwood a week ago!" His smile faded just a little.

"Would you believe me if I told you we forgot to pay the bill?" The glare continued. "I didn't think so. There was a small portion of our house server that wasn't working and it took us a while to figure which part."

"Your... server?"

"Tosh played with it a little bit, it's really quite impressive, but apparently there was a lose... wire in the main frame."

"A lose wire."

"Right! The alien tech attached to that portion of the server shorted out and so a good... 40... 9 percent of our operations weren't operating."

"So you haven't been operating for a week?"

"No, it was a progressive thing. The alien tech has a little issue with sentience. The whole thing got up and moved around the room, but the process took roughly 3 years. It took a week to put it back together." She raised her hands in surrender.

"Regardless, I'm happy to see you, Jack." She reached up and hugged him with a little less enthusiasm than before. "Now, tell me what you know about a man named Harry Dresden." Jack stopped and stared at her like she has sprouted another head.

"How do you know him?" the captain asked slowly.

"He's upstairs. He's been here for a week."

* * *

><p>... A 3 foot pile of paperwork, and several hours later...<p>

Something is different; that was the first thing that popped into my slowly clearing head. There was no scent of hospital soap in the air, and the bed had somehow acquired a metal cover while I was sleeping. Strangest of all was that Dr. Jones was not there; she was always talking quietly to someone or to herself as I came to, but that wasn't happening.

I don't think we're in London any more, Toto.

Great, I'm reduced to making Wizard of Oz references.

I tried to move my fingers and toes, check and check; my toes even felt like the were inside something other than socks. Which could be a good thing... may be. My arms and legs seemed to be functioning properly as well, along with my neck. One thing about coming out of a sedative like that is my head always pounds, so I knew not to move that around too much.

I groaned. The first thing they teach you at "So, you've been abducted" school is not to alert your captives to a change in your state if you were unconscious.

Umm... Oops?

"Hey cap! I think he's coming 'round." A voice near by. A familiar voice. I let my min...

I know that voice!

I tried to say something, but there was a pounding of feet and a subsequent pounding in my head and all desire to make noise ran for the hills.

"Good!" Now that was not a voice I knew. "Maybe now we can ask the giant man why my instruments are failing."

"Yes, Doc. Let's ask the man who has been under sedation for a week why your equipment isn't up to par. Great idea."

I definitely knew that voice. From behind my eyelids, I saw lights blink on. Bright lights, the kind that I wanted to hex for the hell of it. I raise my arm, feeling it drag IV tubes and wires with it to cover my eyes. A large, gentle hand caught my wrist.

"Whoa there, partner. I'll just switch those off." And the lights were gone. I nodded, kind of, in thanks. I tried to say something, but words never made it past my parched tongue. And like magic, a straw appeared at the corner of my mouth. I drank, slowly, and waited before a rough thank you came out.

"You're welcome." This voice was just as gentle as the hand that caught me, and the guy was obviously American. "Give yourself a minute or two to kick the rest of the sedative out of your system." I nodded a little more firmly this time and drank more water. "I'm Jack, by the way, Captain Jack Harkness."

"Harry," I croaked.

"Oh, we know who you are." That was the first female I had heard. She sounded far away, or maybe behind something, but definitely female. "Your friend made sure of that." I screwed up my face a little, and must have gotten my confusion across. "The perverted one in the skull." So, Bob was here. I wonder how that happened...

"You just relax, big boy." Captain Jack put his hand on my shoulder. "We'll be here when you're ready to get up and start moving around."

I laid there a little longer listening to what what going on around me. The troll who had taken up residence in my skull was appeased by the lack of light, and was not terribly annoyed by the noises around me, so I let them flow through. The clack of fingers on a least two keyboards, the hiss and whir of an expensive sounding coffee maker, the hurried steps of four... no five people moving around a large space... What really caught me off guard was the screech of something that sounded vaguely reptilian, but huge and the sound of freely falling water.

Eventually I felt the drugs kick in, and the troll receded back in to the recesses of my mind that I didn't even want to venture to. I groaned, and everyone came a runnin'. There was a clatter as what sounded like bone hit a metal tray right by my head. "You would think that I was a bomber," I muttered.

"From what Bob has told us," responded Jack. "You very well could be, Technology is how we do business here, we can't have you blowing our operations to kingdom come, pal."

"Where exactly am I?" I cracked my eye at him for the first time.

"Harry Dresden," he said, looking me directly in the eye, "Welcome to Torchwood." I rolled my eye.

"Thank you?" I groaned.

"You're in the main base of Torchwood in the middle of Cardiff, Wales."

"Come again, Bob. I was in Lake Michigan, then I was in London, and now you're telling me that I'm in Cardiff?" I tried opening my eyes again. There was less of a reaction for the troll in my head, so I opened them all the way to find five people and a skull staring at me. That was an unnerving sight, to say the least.

Slowly, and with help, I managed to get myself into a sitting position. Apparently, without a doctor to monitor everything, coming out of sedation is hell. I was moved (Jack basically carried me, both of my legs were still asleep) to a well worn couch. Bob followed. We spent the better part of the rest of the day (I assume) sharing what happened. Apparently, my duffle bag fell through something called a Rift into a dimension not my own. According to Bob, it's nothing like the NeverNever, though I've never seen a fricking pterodactyl in my reality.

"Aliens? As if my life wasn't complicated enough already." I slumped further into the cushions. This was the kind of couch I had in my apartm… "So, what are we talking about here, Bob? Little green men with big ass eyes that want to probe me?"

"It's not like you're getting any action, you never know." I glared at the skull, and it was meant with a snort of acquiescence. "To be honest, I'm not entirely sure they're aliens. From what I've seen, they could be trolls."

"You've seen them?"

I swear he nodded. "They have 'em in the basement."

"Most people have canned goods in the basement, not aliens. Granted I had…" I trailed off. "Who has aliens in the basement?" I said, a little too loud.

"We do, wanna see?" Jack had somehow snuck up on me. He offered me a hand up. I tested my legs and let him haul me off the couch. "Come on, I'll show you."

We went slowly. In one hand I had Bob, and I had the other on the wall to make sure I didn't fall over. There was something manly in me that forced me to decline Jack's offer to be a crutch. I learned quickly that stairs were the enemy, and they we had several flights of them to conquer. Needless to say, it was a long journey; almost worthy of Tolkein.

Our journey ended in a dank hall lined with Plexiglas walled cells. In each of them was a creature that looked so familiar, but in a twisted, mutated way. Not Ninja Turtle mutated, more enraged Hulk mutated only less green. I took a few steps closer to the nearest cell, placing my hand on the Plexiglas to steady myself.

"We call them Weevels." Jack was right behind me, nearly touching me. I looked a little longer, then the thing gave me a profile, and it hit me.

"This is a troll."


	4. New News Noose

"What do you mean a troll?" Jack stared at me like I had grown another head. Though to be fair, I don't think I was the only who hadn't considered the other preternatural nasties we read about in sciences fiction novels to be works of just that, fiction.

"I mean a troll," I replied. "You know, big ugly things that aren't too bright. Usually hide under bridges and in dark caves." I looked up at the little crowd gathered around me. The Torchwood team was looking at me like I had completely lost my mind, but I'm sure I was looking them the same way earlier. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor in the cell where the Weevil/troll was being held while Jack, Owen (the doctor who had the undead vibe on him… at first I thought Black Court, but he was eating garlic-y pizza right beside me), and Ianto kept a firm hold on the poles Animal Control officers used that were looped around the… creature. "Let me finish up here, and we'll see what we can find out, okay?"

After sweeping the cell clear of debris and drawing a 4 foot circle I could in chalk on the floor, I had the guys lead the creature into the circle. "When I give the word, release the thing." I looked each one in the eye, and while they thought I was crazy, they nodded. A little prick of the finger and I finished the circle with a drop of blood and before I sent my Will into it, I nodded to the guys and the creature was freed.

For a split second, I thought it didn't work. Bob said it was a possibility, he's convinced that we're in a different dimension, whatever that means; but apparently that would be cause enough to cut me off from the power that had been with me since childhood. When the creature charged at me, it was thrown back to the other side of the circle and back again. "Like fish in a barrel," I muttered.

"What did you do?" Jack was flabbergasted.

"I trapped it in a circle of power. The only way it's getting out is if something on the outside breaks the circle." I admit, I was being smug, I wanted to show off. Jack glared at me, and stepped away to make a call back up to the woman upstairs on his little ear piece.

That made me do a double take. Electronic devices tended to give up the ghost when I was throwing around any sort of power, even the little bit it took to energize the circle. Jack came back to the cell and took in my expression. He tilted his head forward a little before it hit him. I knew Bob would fill him in, the little spirit could never keep his mouth closed... in a manner of speaking.

"What's that on your ear?" I asked.

"It's a com device, Tosh worked 'em up for us using some confiscated alien tech. I'm surprised it's still working. From what the skull told us, it should be useless." I nodded and moved closer to him, reaching for the device. Physical contact usually works just as well as me throwing magic around. I was about to pluck the thing from its resting place when Jack turned his head. It never dawned on me that we are about the same height. It couldn't have been avoided. Our eyes locked.

A Soulgaze. This is such an intimate position to be in, no one should be able to look into another's soul. I have no business seeing what I see when I lock gazes with someone new, but I have no choice in the matter, and neither does he. And what we see will stick with us until the end of our days, something that doesn't seem to be coming any time soon for Captain Jack Harkness.

Now, normally when looking into someone's soul, there's a room where we both stand and I get to see what makes them tick. Jack was like no other man I'd ever met. We were falling. The two of us, side by side. I screamed briefly, in the natural response, but when I realized that the bottom would never come, I stopped. It was in that moment that I came to know Jack Harkness was not your average human being. The bottom of this hell we were falling through was his death, and it would never come. All around us were flashing scenes of unearthly battles against beings I could hardly put a name to. And in everyone, Jack looked the exact same as he does falling beside me, including the expression of sheer terror etched into every line on his face. Something in me knew what I was seeing were clips of things that had happened centuries in earth's past, and what will happen eons into the future. And he fell through them all.  
>Deaths.<br>Births.

I was terrifying. He was so alone, completely alone. There was such a huge gap between him and everyone he loves; a gap that simply cannot be closed any more. It took me a while to put the pieces together…

Time travel.

This man has broken and will break one of the Seven Laws of Magic.

And then I fell on my ass.

What felt like an eternity for me, was just a moment or two in reality, and after that moment Jack was looking at me with horror on his face. I had no idea why. He kept glancing at Owen and back to me, a question clearly written on his face, I just couldn't read it. Maybe it was in Welsh.

The dark haired woman not attached to a computer desk stepped forward and offered me a hand up. I accepted it and heaved myself into a position that vaguely resembled standing. It took a while. I guess the Circle took more out of me than normal. The thought crossed my mind and all hell broke loose.

When Dresden hit the floor, the odd blue light around the Weevil flickered. It took Jack a moment to process what had just happened. A moment was all he had because the Weevil, newly freed from its odd confinements, was charging right at him. It hit him like a ton of bricks, teeth gnashing, claws tearing; but through the haze of what had just happened Jack completely forgot about the stun gun resting in his hand. It wasn't until Ianto zapped the beast and helped Owen and Gwen haul the thing back to the cell and shut it in properly.

Jack picked himself up off the floor, brushed off concerned expressions from his team and slammed Dresden against the wall.

"What aren't you telling me?" he demanded. Dresden looked like he had fallen through the ceiling a couple times without getting a scratch.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" He struggled to get lose, but the Captain had too much strength on him. "I suppose I could ask the same question." Dresden looked him in the eye again. No hesitation, no reservation. Something had passed between the two men, just before the Weevil was freed. The look in the "wizard's" eyes said that he knew more now than he did a minute ago.

Jack dropped him. Dresden fell to the floor in a heap, all tangled limbs and borrowed sweatpants. "Get up," ordered Jack in an authoritative tone that the team rarely heard him use. "My office. Now. Bring the skull." And he was gone.

Gwen, once again, helped Dresden to his feet. "I don't know what's gotten into him," she commented. "I'm Gwen, by the way. Gwen Cooper."

"Nice to meet you," responded the wizard as he shook her extend hand. "Is there something… odd about him?" he ventured. "Something that's out of the ordinary?"

"You are in the wrong place to be asking about that, nothing we deal with is in the ordinary, Mr. Dresden." She started to walk away from him, and he had to jog to catch up.

"I mean…"

"I know what you mean, Dresden. It's not my place to say, okay?"

He nodded silently behind her.

It was a long hard journey back to the main floor. Harry was puffing like a billows by the second flight of stairs, he nearly blacked out by the time he made it back to the sofa. As he sat there trying to catch his breath, he looked up to the office with walls of windows surrounding it. The man who held him to the wall was pacing incessantly. Something had obviously unhinged him, and it seemed that Harry was the cause.

His body back under his control, he collected Bob and climbed another flight of stairs to the glass door. Before he could knock, the door opened.

"Get in, and close the door behind you." He did. "Now, tell me what you are."

"I don't think I understand, you already know that I'm a wizard."

"Yeah, magic and all that shit. I don't know how you managed to hold that Weevil. It didn't last. It escaped when you were making a pass at me." Dresden nearly fell from his propped posture against one of the supports between the windows.

"I was _not_ making a pass. I was trying to take a closer look at the thing on your ear. And you're one to talk, you can't die."

"Who told you that?" The air in the room seemed to thicken. Jack's hand strayed to the gun on his hip was he reassessed the man in front of him.

"No one, I know because of what happened down there." Jack looked at him expectedly. "We were pulled into a Soul Gaze. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and they're mostly right. We, on a very basic level, looked in each other's souls. You'll notice that I don't really look people in the eyes often. What we saw in one another down there can never been unseen."

"It's not what I saw that's the problem, Dresden." Jack drew his gun. "It's what I didn't see."

"What do you mean?"

"There's nothing in your soul, as you put it. Nothing." Orange light illuminated the room as Bob perked up to the conversation.

"Nothing?" asked the Spirit. "No color, no sound, no light…"

"Nothing. It's blank."

From his position on the table, Bob directed the men to arrange themselves directly, or as close to directly, in front of him. He flowed from the safety of his skull around Harry's head and around his heart, then did the same thing to Jack. When he returned to the safety of his skull, Bob cleared his throat, quite the feet for someone without a corporal body.

"As a spirit of intellect among other things, I am capable of things beyond human imagination, yet the pair of you have completely stumped me." The skull pivoted to face Harry. "Your soul is gone." It rotated in the opposite direction to face Jack. "You can't ever die. And I have no idea how either of you are doing what you're doing right now."

The two men looked at the skull for second, and simultaneously slumped back in their chairs. Harry's face was slack. "What do you mean 'your soul is gone'? How am I still walking around?"

"Well, in all technicalities, I suppose the body could survive without a soul for a short while, but you've been kicking for over a week now. You should be dead, by all rights, Boss."

"Gee, thanks."

"It would help if I knew what happened after you shoved me in a bag and buried me in your Godmother's garden."

"I did what now?"

"You put me and all the other socially questionable items in a bag and buried me in what turned out to be your Godmother's garden in the NeverNever. You didn't even bother to pack me something to read. Those Swords are not very talkative. And the NeverNever! Do you have any idea how close I came to being caught in there?" He pause to take a breath, as it were, and finally caught the expression of udder confusion on Harry's face. "Earth to Dresden."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Bob. I know the NeverNever, but I don't know anything about a bag, or Lea's garden."

"Careful, Boss. I don't know if she can hear you here, but don't go around flinging her name, even a nickname."

"What do you mean here?"

"Oh, right. We didn't cover the 'parallel dimension' thing when you woke up. Someone got side tracked by aliens."

"Yeah, it's not like you were giving me life changing information or anything."

"Anyway, I have a feeling that we're further from home than just the 10 hours of flight time it would take to get to O'Hare. Jack'll back me up here, but my theory is that we've somehow gotten ourselves to a different dimension that is just similar enough to ours to put us at ease, but the differences are noticeable if you know where to look." Harry stared at the skull for a moment, letting the information sink in a little.

"So, these aliens might not actually exist, they're just a part of this other dimension."

There as a beat before Bob piped back you. "You're going to except the alternate dimension theory faster than the aliens fact?"

"It's more along the lines of I don't want to have to deal with the aliens on top of everything else. Knowing you, you've probably got a way back from here already planned out. I don't really have to worry too much. Hell, I could probably get us back on one of the Ways if I had to."

"Boss," the spirit cautioned. "We don't even know if we can access the NeverNever from here."

"The Weevil/troll things are coming from there. I know they're a little deformed, but my gut is telling me that I'm right."

"The only thing your gut is good at indicating is whether or not it's time for more Burger King."

Dresden nodded, "or pizza. Potentially coffee."

There was a knock at the door at that moment, and Ianto popped open the door with a pair of steaming mugs balanced on a tray in one hand. He distributed them to the Captain and the wizard, and left with a pat from Jack.

"You haven't said much," Dresden commented before taking a sip. "Hells Bells! That's good joe!" His hands dwarfed the ceramic mug in his hand as he savored each sip. Between slurps, the wizard regarded the ageless man sitting next to him expectedly.

"There was nothing I really needed to add." Jack shifted into a more offensive stance. "What about you, you heard the little guy say I can't die, and you say nothing about it."

"What do you mean 'little guy'?" Bob managed to make the skull looked indignant. This was ignored by both men.

"I already knew. I'm surprised Bob mentioned it. That incident in the cell was called a Soulgaze. It's something that happens when a wizard, or someone who has the ability to wield the magic, locks eyes with someone else. It's a little glimpse into what makes the other tick."

"Will it happen again?"

"Nope, once it happens between two individuals, it cannot happen again between the two."

"Good, I don't think I could stomach seeing that again."

"Don't bother trying to forget it, they tend to stick with you."

"I was afraid you were going to say that." There was a pause. All the tension that had gathered in Jack a moment ago faded away. The men were starting to draw closer to one another.

"AND… before you two start making out, let's get back to Harry's memories. Or lack thereof." A new kind of tension filled the air. "I'm a little concerned about all this, Boss, all joking aside. Tell me what you remember."

Harry gave himself a mental shake. "I remember waking up in a train station with a bullet hole in my chest. Before that is hazy."

"Oh…kay. Do you remember anything about South America? I know you were headed that way when you planted me."

"Why would I go to South America?"

"Your daug…" Bob paused, questioning the wisdom of telling the wizard who has had to process a lot already about the daughter he was supposed to save just over a week ago. "You know, I'm not sure any more," he lied. "I'd like to try something a little unorthodox, Boss. It's something from my Kemmler days."

The alarm bells were nearly audible. "Are you sure?"

"It's safe if that's what you're wondering. I just need to get into your head." Dresden gave a near unperceivable nod and the spirit flowed from the skull and into one of the wizard's ears.

There was no other motion or noise for quite some time. The Captain, feeling a little superfluous, got up and started picking up some of the clutter around the office. He collected the now empty coffee mugs and brought them to Ianto's counter, giving the barista in question an affectionate peck on the cheek before returning to find the two new comers separate at last.

"So, what's the verdict, oh orangey one?"

Nonchalantly, Bob piped up with "He's dead."


End file.
